I’d just like to follow up, disgracefully late, on Charley’s excellent write-up of our May chat with State Treasurer Tim Cahill.
The majority of our conversation focused on Cahill’s spring visit to India as an Eisenhower Fellow. The Treasurer, already familiar with the importance of internationalization to our economic well being, was impressed and sobered. The scale of development in India, he said, is staggering. Their infrastructure needs are enormous. The connections with Massachusetts are substantial. The opportunities are immediate. “Globalization is here,” he said. “We have to lead it, not just chase and follow it.”
I am not sure I can properly explain how important I think it is for our top government officials to have this kind of understanding of the world economy and our role in it. Foreign countries today are in many ways like other U.S. states were to Massachusetts in earlier times: sources of students for our universities; places for our firms to invest; opportunities, and challenges, across the spectrum. From immigration to investments, the state’s policies with regard to places like India and China, not to mention Mexico and Canada, are as critical for us today, in my opinion, as our integration with New York, Texas, Illinois, and California, for example, was in earlier years.
I hope we hear a lot more from Cahill about the policies Massachusetts should adopt to benefit from our increasing economic connections to other countries, and I hope other top state officials have similar opportunities to educate themselves about the incredible transformations taking place outside our borders.
PS: BTW, the state’s auction of abandoned property on eBay is in its final 24-hours. Check it out and get a deal!
He certainly doesn’t get casinos…
Ryan đŸ˜‰
Looks like $20,000 in total. Is that all the abandoned crap Tim could find to hawk on eBay? Is it just me or do all the listing look worse — much worse — than the costume jewelery sold on cable TV?
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Why not put the Hurley Building up for bid? That seems abandoned every time I walk by it.
Do business with whom? What are their policies re women, abortion, gay rights, green house gases, pollution, child labor, minimum wage, slavery, indentured servitude, taxation, religious freedom, voting, first amendment issues, celebrating diversity, religious intolerance?
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I’m afraid these countries, India, Chine and others, are in egregious violation of all of aforementioned and thus ineligible for us to do any business with and Cahill shouldn’t have gone there to begin with.
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No self respecting democrat would have gone to S. Afrika twenty years ago. How things have changed.
With friends like you, MCRD, who needs political enemies!
This was anything but a junkett? What is a democrat doing going to a country that is one of the worst offenders of every principle that democrats allegedly stand for?
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Do I think some Republicans condoned apartheid? Absolutely. I’m not a fool. There is a senior democratic senator in our congress that was a card carrying klansman.
Our congress is representative of America. The best and the worst.